I’m not exactly sure why, but I have a crush on the small Kerr jars used for canning (the cursive writing on the side, the diminutive size, the satisfying seal of the lids?). It all started when I bought some quince jam at the Farmer’s Market. I loved the Kerr jar it came in which, once empty, was perfect for homemade vinaigrettes.

Recently, I lost the jar. I thought I’d just go get some more jam, but then I saw a recipe for pickled veggies that I couldn’t get out of my head. I couldn’t help it, I had to buy a box of the Kerr bottles–and, last weekend, I sliced beets, carrots, and jalepenos and brined them.

I now have a crush on the beautiful colors in these jars. And tonight for my SJVWP meeting, I served spring greens with goat cheese as a side salad–and allowed my guests to add whichever veggies they wanted. Esther and Karen were ideal diners, since they both come from cultures (Dutch and Swedish) that value the pickled veggie.

I sent them home with a bottle of pickled beets, even though Esther confessed that I’d left my original jar at her house.

Pickled Veggies (adapted from Sunset magazine)

3 c. white vinegar

1 1/2 c. rice vinegar

1 c. plus 2 T. sugar

3 beets

6 jalapenos

2 carrots

Whisk vinegars, sugar, and salt in a bowl with 3 c. water until sugar dissolves. Slice vegetables into very thin slices. Put the veggies in jars, gently tamping them down and cover with brine. Chill, covered, at least one day.

• book review on a text I’m using this semester in my methods class
• online encyclopedia essay about wendy rose
• essay about wendy rose that i am oh so far from being finished with
• profile of a cow and its caretaker which will be part of a book called cows of america
  
• emails, grant proposals, syllabi, all kinds of work related documents, tweets, and lists

this record is brief, but (except for the last item) it illustrates a new commitment to writing.

i have other plans for 2012, plans associated with writing. i just finished a blog post which will eventually be published here. i have a writing retreat coming up (san franciscans take notice). and i am in the process of writing reports and application essays (rest assured, fresno friends, these applications are not for other jobs). if you want to know more, though, you’ll have to follow me here. i’ll let you know when/if i have writing-related news.

lesson learned this year #1: what i have to say sounds smarter when it’s single spaced.

Some of the books have been forgettable; others keep coming back to me. I had purchased Richard Flanagan’s Wanting a long time ago but had never read it. It isn’t the type of book that I’m usually drawn to, but I find myself thinking about it occasionally and wishing that one of my friends had also read it. The novel combines several story lines: an aboriginal girl in what is now Tasmania, the British colonizer John Franklin who first takes care of and eventually destroys her, and Charles Dickens who creates a play about Franklin’s disastrous trip to the Arctic. It’s a meditation on desire and colonization–and the destruction that we can leave in our wake.

Another book that I’ve recommended to several people is Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey. Ciezadlo and her husband are journalists who spent several years in Iraq and Lebanon after 9/11. While there, she became obsessed with discovering local food traditions and their origins–so her account of being in the midst of the Iraq war includes recipes and stories about food.

I also really enjoyed Henrietta Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of the African American woman whose cells, now labeled HeLa, are used in scientific research all over the world. However, her cells were taken without her informed consent and her family didn’t even know about let alone benefit from their sale. Not one to read a lot of scientific work, I was still fascinated by this story.

I look forward to another year of reading. For now, here are my favorite ten books of the year (in the order that I read them):

Richard Flanagan, Wanting

Jim Burke, What’s the Big Idea?

Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Patti Smith, Just Kids

Dorothy Wickenden, Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

Philip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice

Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table

In the spirit of the season, then, I give to you this recipe which came off a “C&H pure cane sugar” cardboard box at one point. Enjoy!

C&H Gingersnaps
¾ c. soft shortening
1 c. C&H Golden Brown Sugar, firmly packed
1 egg, unbeaten
¼ c. molasses
2 c. sifted all-purpose flour
¼ t. salt
2 t. soda
1 t. EACH ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves

Combine shortening, sugar, and egg in mixing bowl, beat until fluffy. Add molasses and beat well. Sift dry ingredients together and add, mix well. Chill dough thoroughly; shape into 1” balls and roll in granulated sugar. Place 2” apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Makes 4 dozen “crinkle-top” cookies.

Picture from Plenty

Today I cooked a dish adapted from the cookbook: Puy Lentil Galettes. I left out the galette part and only prepared the lentils. The result was a fresh tasting, slightly (surprisingly) sweet, and healthy dish. I highly recommend it. Here’s the recipe:

Puy Lentils (adapted from Plenty)

Ingredients:

1 c. puy lentils

2 bay leaves (mine were quite small so I used four)

1 t. cumin

1 t. coriander

4 T. olive oil

1 medium onion (roughly chopped)

2 large garlic cloves (minced)

3/4 c. Greek yogurt (I used non-fat)

2 c. baby spinach leaves

3 T. chopped cilantro

2 T. chopped mint

juice of 1 lemon

salt and black pepper to taste

1. Cook the lentils in a quart of boiling water with the bay leaves for 20 to 30 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat olive oil and fry the onion for 6 to 8 minutes until golden and very soft. Add the cumin, coriander, and garlic and cook for 2 more minutes. Add to the lentils and cool.

3. Add the yogurt, spinach, herbs, and lemon juice to the lentils. Finish with salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

First, the video.

And one of my facebook updates: I write to make sense of the world, to discover what I think, to share what I’m passionate about.

In trying to identify what it is about these texts that so enthralls me, I’ve come up with a couple of things. First, I think that these texts reveal characters in unimaginable situations who must make difficult decisions–and that these decisions often reveal something about the self that these characters never knew before. Do any of us really know what we’d do if we were starving with no end in sight? Would we share what we have with others? Would we hide ourselves from view, selfishly eating whatever food we did find? I’d like to think that I’d be generous–to be honest, I’d like to think that I could continue to desire life even in such difficult situations. But do I really know how I’d respond? Do I really know what I’m capable of?

I think I’m also fascinated by these texts because they illustrate the classic good vs. evil conflict. In some cases, that conflict is internal, but in other versions, a pocket of heroic people fight whatever evil power has taken over the world (be it the dark majority, a lethal virus, evil institutions, etc.). In these dystopias, there is still hope–and the two sides are finely delineated. I’m drawn to the clarity of these visions–it’s easy to root against zombies because they don’t have consciousness, they aren’t “human.”

I don’t want life to be this hard, but sometimes I do wish that it were this clear.

Although I try to look at all the positive things that happen in the world, sometimes the flip side, the side where people are cruel and dangerous and commit unspeakable acts, can’t be ignored. During the first week after Jen’s death, I felt this need to understand how her ex-boyfriend could ever do such a thing to someone he supposedly loved. I kept wanting a newspaper to publish a long article about who this person was and how his life had led him to such a horrible act. No such article has been published yet. I spent last weekend in San Francisco and forced myself to stop scanning internet news sites to find out more about Jen’s murder. I also thought a lot about this need for an explanation–and realized that I probably wouldn’t ever understand how this man could do what he did . . . no newspaper article could ever account for how someone could take the life of another.

So I’m left in mourning over the ugliness that human beings can perpetrate. I’m not celebrating Jen’s life here–that would resonate too much of closure and I feel like she should still be alive making a difference in the lives of those she encounters. I’m also not typing the name of the man who killed her–I’m too angry about the fact that their names will be linked in almost any story written about Jen. There’s no happy ending to this story, only sadness for a life which ended too early, too violently, and too undeservedly.

However, something surprising happened this year: I was able to reconnect in a really deep way with my writing self. I was able to write through the insecurities I developed as I wrote my dissertation and I think . . . I hope . . . I’ve developed a new relationship with writing. I have two new projects that I want to work on–and much of that desire comes from completing a writing commitment successfully. I remembered something that I hadn’t felt for awhile, that writing makes me feel alive and conscious of my cognitive and analytical abilities in ways that bring me deep satisfaction.

The article uses the phrase in my title, “a preference for simplicity,” to point out the deeply embedded cultural differences between the U.S. and the Netherlands. It made me ponder what my life would look like if I tried to shift my everyday practices towards simplicity. Since the article uses food and transportation as its basis, these are also the areas of my life that I’m considering. In the area of food, I tend not to cook–I buy a lot of prepared foods which involve too much packaging. This is an area in which even a little change would have a lot of impact. Right now, I’m cooking more because I have more time–so I need to think about how I can continue this practice when my life gets more stressful. I do have an herb garden and some sorrel growing in pots in my backyard–and there are plans in the works to get some raised beds in my yard.

As for transportation, although I don’t even have a bike anymore, I think I do okay with this. In fact, I blogged about this same issue a few years ago and have made some changes in my life. I drive a Prius, I tend to run errands in groups (i.e., go to the grocery store after my gym workout and group my visits to one geographical location), I try to work at home when I can, I’m one of the few people in Fresno who walks from one store to the next in the outdoor malls instead of driving, and I really like walking when I can. I’m sure there are still small improvements I could make, though. I’m going to have to think about that–and about what other areas of my life could be shifted towards simplicity.